Law and Ethics in the Business of Health Care

Book excerpt: This new textbook explores the world of healthcare law from business and ethical perspectives. It is designed to provide not only a broad survey of traditional healthcare law topics, including contracts, medical malpractice, institutional liability, and regulatory areas such as HIPAA and Stark, but also a deep dive into higher-order analysis of what makes the business of medicine unique. It does this by presenting ethical and professional conflicts in for-profit and entrepreneurial healthcare, by showing recent efforts at reform, and by engaging students with end-of-life care decisions and costs. Chapters include excerpts from seminal and cutting-edge articles and cases chosen to illustrate legal rules and concepts, as well as to present the boundaries of long-standing debates on matters of public policy, business strategy, and ethical considerations. Cases and readings are followed by questions and exercises for either individual or group use, designed to foster classroom discussion, written skills, and critical, interdisciplinary thinking.